“Business models are converging. New access devices are growing. Where it the money for Dell?”. It’s on this somewhat laconic assignment that the final of the Dell Case Competition started on January, 26th in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the enthusiastic HBS team (Don Khamapirad, Yi Sun, Ellis Chi and Benjamin Gigot).
We spent 24 very intense hours crunching profitability, growth and market size figures from piles of companies in the hardware, software and communications industry to reach the conclusion that network infrastructure is the area where the greatest level of shareholder value creation can be expected. We made a “bold” recommendation for Dell to bet on distributed computing and extend into middleware and communication services.
I guess fortune rewards the audacious. Kellogg, Wharton and Chicago were no match and we won the second prize, behind only Michigan, the organizing team. We had a great time and sincerely hope that more HBS students will compete next year.
